Jim O'Connor/US PresswireJordan Theodore led Seton Hall one step closer to his dream of an NCAA Tournament berth with 16 points and 10 assists in the Pirates' 94-64 win over St. John's last night.

Jordan Theodore is trying hard not to get ahead of himself now. But how can a guy stop himself from dreaming?

This is not hyperbole, either. These, he insisted, are actual dreams. He is walking onto a basketball court someplace — the actual arena is unimportant — when he spots the familiar NCAA logo on the floor, the one with the big blue circle and the white italic lettering.

“You know the one I’m talking about,” Theodore said last night, and everyone who has ever seen a college basketball game that matters does, too. “I just want to get on that court. I might even (shed a) tear.

“But trust me, I’m going to be ready for that spotlight.”

Then he snaps himself back to the present, because he had come too far to get lost in the moment now. Seton Hall was celebrating an easy 94-64 victory over St. John’s at the Rock, a rare night when the senior point guard could spend the last 10 minutes on the bench waving a towel to encourage the walk-ons and freshmen who were finishing the blowout.

But this win, like everything this Pirates team has accomplished so far, started with Theodore. He had a team-high 16 points and 10 assists, most coming in the final minutes of the first half and the first minutes after intermission when this one truly became a laugher.

The last thing head coach Kevin Willard wants is a team, just a week and a half removed from a six-game losing streak, to get ahead of itself. Still, the Pirates are 18-8 overall and 7-7 in conference play. They have four games remaining in the regular season — at Cincinnati, then Georgetown and Rutgers in Newark, then at DePaul — before the Big East Tournament.

Win two, and the Pirates are on the bubble. Win three, and it’s hard to see a scenario where they’re left out. Win four, and Theodore won’t have to close his eyes anymore to see that logo.

He’ll be standing on it.

“One of my goals was to get Seton Hall back to the tournament,” he said, “and this year I have an opportunity to do that.”

Few gave him that chance when this season started. This is the best kind of story in college basketball, a senior who persevered through the worst of college basketball, getting a chance to see the best and, in the process, salvage another lost March for the local teams.

Theodore missed the tournament as a freshman, saw his coach, Bobby Gonzalez, get fired as a sophomore and nearly transferred before he became a junior. It was Seton Hall legend and assistant Shaheen Holloway who talked him off the ledge, and Willard who knew the right thing to say to make a point guard happy.

“He told me he was giving me the keys to the car,” Theodore said, “and that I was going to drive.”

Still, as he shot jumpers in an empty gymnasium in Paterson with his high school coach watching last summer, he knew he was out of time. Kemba Walker, his AAU teammate and best friend, had carried Connecticut to a national title. Theodore could only watch.

“He told me, ‘This is my year,’ ” said Damon Wright, his former coach at Paterson Catholic. “He kept saying, ‘This is it. I have to do it now. It’s all or nothing.’ He wants this for his legacy.”

It looked like it was all and then nothing. Seton Hall raced off to that 15-2 start, then lost its next six — a stretch when the best teams in the Big East figured out that forcing the ball out of Theodore’s hands is the easiest strategy for beating a team with just one reliable ball-handler.

Few teams recover from a slide like that. The Pirates found their game, before it was too late, in a victory at Rutgers. Credit Willard for holding a fragile group together, and Theodore for rebounding from his own tough stretch.

“What’s different? Life,” Theodore said. “During that six-game (losing) stretch I wasn’t going out, I wasn’t answering my phone, I didn’t even want to talk to you guys. But we came together as a team.”

The 10 assists gives him 178 on the season, jumping him from 12th to eighth on Seton Hall’s all-time single-season list. The school record of 197, set by Golden Sunkett in 1962-63, is almost certain to fall.

But Theodore knows people won’t remember a number in a record book. It’s the tournament that matters. An unexpected trip this March would be an enormous boost to Willard’s rebuilding efforts, and if it happens, it’ll be his point guard who leads the team onto that logo.

“I want that so bad, man,” Theodore said. “I dream about the tournament. I’ve been watching it my entire life. Trust me, it hurts every year being knocked out and watching my best friends play.

“This year, we have a chance to do it. And I’m going to do everything I can to make sure we do it.”